Push Comes To Shove On Mx

March 19, 1985|By James O`Shea, Chicago Tribune. (Tribune reporter Lea Donosky also contributed to this story.)

WASHINGTON — While the White House pushed its campaign for support, the Senate on Monday debated a proposal to provide $1.5 billion for 21 new MX missiles, with advocates and opponents predicting a cliffhanger vote on the weapon Tuesday.

Even as Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole (R., Kan.) called the MX proposal to the Senate floor, an intense 11th-hour lobbying campaign for and against the weapon was underway.

Returning from Canada aboard Air Force One, President Reagan phoned several wavering lawmakers to seek support in the vote, now scheduled for 4 p.m. Chicago time Tuesday, the same day he is to make a rare appearance on Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, groups opposing the MX campaigned against the weapon in the halls outside the Senate Armed Services Committee, which sent the MX proposal to the Senate floor Monday on an 11-6 vote.

Proponents and opponents of the weapon differed on the need for the MX, the 10-warhead intercontinental ballistic missile that escaped defeat in the Senate last year by a single vote when Vice President George Bush broke a tie. The administration says the MX is needed to replace the aging U.S. Minuteman missile force and to bolster the U.S. position at the arms-control talks now underway in Geneva. Opponents say the MX is a weapon dangerous to the U.S. because it might provoke the Soviets to a first strike.

Congress last year appropriated $1.5 billion for 21 MX missiles in the fiscal year 1985 budget in addition to the 21 missiles that were voted in fiscal 1984. But under an ingenious compromise on the fiscal 1985 defense budget, Congress said the administration could not spend the $1.5 billion in fiscal 1985 money until the lawmakers voted to release the money this year.

The idea behind the delay was twofold: to give MX opponents another crack at defeating the weapon and to lure the Soviet Union back to the arms talks in Geneva, a step the Soviets later took.

Both sides agreed the vote Tuesday would be close.

``If I were a betting man, I would need odds on this one,`` said Sen. Barry Goldwater (R., Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. ``It is very, very tight, very close.`` He said Reagan`s lobbying has changed some votes but added ``we`ve lost some, too.``

Sen. Lawton Chiles (D., Fla.), an MX opponent, agreed the vote would be close. Sen. John Glenn (D., Ohio), who opposes providing the $1.5 billion needed for the missile, said Reagan ``might have the edge on this.`` As the debate got underway, no one was predicting victory.

Even supporters of the weapon said they were not backing it enthusiastically. Sen. Sam Nunn (D., Ga.), a defense expert and influential member of the Armed Services Committee, said his vote for the MX should not be read as an endorsement of the missile.

Nunn said he would not vote for any additional MX missiles in the administration`s drive to put 100 of them in silos by 1989.

In the lobbying campaign and in the debate on the Senate floor, the administration and MX proponents bet heavily on what Chiles called ``the Geneva card.``

If Congress were to deny Reagan the $1.5 billion for the missiles, Goldwater said, the lawmakers would undermine the U.S. position at the arms-control talks in Geneva. He said a negative vote on the MX money would play into the Soviets` hands because they could stall the talks while Congress

``unilaterally reduces the only U.S. missile that can be deployed within the decade.``

Only weeks ago the blunt and outspoken Goldwater indicated he might oppose more money for the MX, but now he says those comments were a ploy to get attention at the White House. ``I got the message across to the President that he`s better get off his rear end, because he didn`t have the votes,``

Goldwater said.

Goldwater now says he supports the MX and he thinks Reagan is ahead on the issue by one or two votes.

But opponents such as Chiles say the winds are blowing their way. Leading the floor debate against the MX, Sen. Gary Hart (D., Colo.) said the Minuteman silos that will house the missile are vulnerable to a Soviet strike.

Nunn further qualified his vote for the money, saying he feared deployment of the MX and similar missiles in the Soviet Union represented a trend toward missiles that would be lauched more rapidly in a crisis. He voted for the 21 missiles in committee because he didn`t want the Soviets to have a monopoly in the ``prompt counterforce capability,`` he said.

Hart and Glenn said the MX money would be better spent on a smaller missile with one warhead that would have a mobile-basing mode the Soviets couldn`t hit so easily. Glenn said the administration simply wants to use an expensive missile as a ``bargaining chip`` in the arms-control talks. ``One time you don`t have a bargaining chip is when you tell the Soviets that you will give it away,`` he said.

Under the compromise passed last year, each house of Congress must vote for the MX money twice, once to authorize spending the money and once to appropriate the $1.5 billion. The vote Tuesday is the first of the two votes in the Senate. If the MX passes in the Senate, the House would vote twice next week.

The White House is expected to lobby intensely about 25 ``undecided`` or wavering House Democrats. House Democrats will meet Wednesday to discuss their position on the weapon.

``The focus is on them,`` one House aide said. ``The whole 25 could make or break it.``